This guest post has been written by expert genealogist Miriam J. Robbins. Miriam has been instructing and lecturing in the United States since 2005. She has been interested in her family history since she was a young girl, living in Southeast Alaska. She began her genealogy research in 1987, and ten years later was successful in reuniting her grandmother with her biological family. Miriam writes an award-winning genealogy blog, AnceStories: The Stories of My Ancestors, and keeps busy adding links to her Online Historical Directories and Online Historical Newspapers websites.

The month of October is known for Family History Month as well as the holiday of Halloween. What better combination of the two than to learn about death records in genealogical research? Death records are one of the first and best types of records used in beginning genealogical research because of the variety of formats in which they appear, the basic facts which they contain, and the immense details that many list about both the decedent's life and death.

It’s important to learn a little about the history of death records in your ancestor’s location, as it will help you understand how the facts were gathered and recorded, what information the records may contain or omit, why the records themselves may be missing or difficult to find, and where to locate the death records currently. Continue reading "Death Records: Vital to Your Research" »

When you travel abroad, you have an opportunity to visit your ancestral home, as well as the important buildings and locations that might have been relevant to your ancestor’s life. These include houses of worship, schools, businesses, beaches, parks and other locations your ancestors may have frequented.

Salisbury Cathedral, Salisbury England (near Stonehenge)

In addition, you may be able to visit repositories holding documents for your family, including libraries, archives and record offices. However, just showing up at a location won’t always do much good. It’s important to pre-plan and do prep work before you visit, or you may just be frustrated and come away with little of real value.

We're delighted to introduce a new guest contributor to our blog - Tyrell "Ty" Rettke. After battling ulcerative colitis and a series of corrective surgeries, Ty is on a round-the-world adventure and will help people he meets in various countries to trace their family histories.

From a small town (Ketchikan) in Alaska, Ty, 28, is interested in history and in tracing his own family heritage. In the first of his monthly posts, he heads to Ireland to see his roots.

Ty, 28, from Ketchikan, Alaska, is on a trip around the world

There are many reasons people travel. One trend is people visiting their ancestral homes. For me, this includes Ireland. So when I made my way across the Atlantic on my mission to circumnavigate the globe, I decided that Ireland was a must for my journey around the world.

My grandfather had managed to shock me again. Had it not been enough that he had three wives before my grandmother? Had it not been enough that my grandmother had been his mistress before she became his wife? Had it not been enough that he had been estranged, if not formally excommunicated, from the Catholic Church? Had it not been enough that he had successfully sued his sister? Had it not been enough that he had been estranged from his family for nearly his whole adult life? Had it not been enough that he changed our surname from Marschall to Marshall, unlike the rest of his family?

Apparently not.

The irony of this whole situation with my grandfather, a.k.a., Joseph Marshall and Big Paw Paw, has not escaped me. He had many relationships that left paper trails, but he wasn't very good at maintaining those relationships. In retrospect, Big Paw Paw had had a social network, and I have been able to uncover bits of his story through it.

Since Big Paw Paw’s story was the first I had tried to uncover six years ago, I did everything in a roundabout way with plenty of backtracking. And I wish I had had a clue about looking at ancestors’ networks. It makes sense now. I mean, I don’t live in a bubble. Do you?Continue reading "Social Networks: Our ancestors had them" »